


Fair's Fair

by fencer_x



Category: Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 15:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13437723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencer_x/pseuds/fencer_x
Summary: Yokozawa reflects on his feelings for his best friend.





	Fair's Fair

You've never been the type to complain about life not being fair.

Complaining just wastes time that could otherwise be spent _fixing things_ —and you're not prone to sitting around waiting for things to get better. You're a doer, you like to stick your nose where others tell you it doesn't belong, because unless you're actively working to make your life and the lives of those you love better, you're not satisfied.

This attitude has made it difficult for you to keep friends in the long run, you're very well aware. If people aren't turned off by your loud, abrasive nature, they eventually feel smothered by your constant need to care for them in your characteristic overprotective way. You can't help it—and there was a time when you couldn't understand why they didn't just accept that you knew what was best for them. But now, after being rejected and abandoned by those you'd called friends, you've learned to gentle your attentions and remain as hands-off as you can possibly stomach.

Then Masamune came into your life, and you realized you were fucked.

If you'd known what would happen in the end between you two (though some part of you refuses to accept that _the end_ has come and gone), you're still not entirely sure which path you would have chosen: if you would have finished adjusting the straps on your bag and turned and quietly started up the steps after the lecture ended—or if you would have done what you did when you saw the quiet freshman who always sat in the leftmost seat at the table on the far end of the second row of the lecture hall being approached by two tentatively tittering co-eds who looked like they had designs you weren't entirely sure were pure.

But hindsight is 20-20, and the fact remains that you _didn't_ just turn and walk out to enjoy the smoke you always took after your afternoon seminar. You _didn't_ go about your day like it was any other Tuesday. Instead, you made a show of stalking down the steps to tower over the girls before they could pester their prey about something involving notes and _because Takano-kun always has the neatest handwriting in the class_ , making a snide remark about how if they can't keep up with an eighty-year-old professor's droning lectures then they don't even belong in the literature department.

It does the job—you pride yourself on being authoritative and snapping those with weaker wills than you into action—and they huff their discontent and scurry up the steps and out the door together, casting dark backwards glances at you. You roll your eyes and let your gaze drift back down to the man you've just saved (gallant hero that you are) from eventually being goaded into into tea or coffee which would turn into a group date and then a one-night-stand that he just doesn't seem suited for. You know this is what would happen, you just don't know why you care.

"You can just tell them off, you know." Of course he knows; you've just shown him how easy it is to tell the prowlers to get lost—and he doesn't seem like an idiot. Just…quiet. Unemotional, even. He doesn't seem the bookish sort—though with his hunched posture, glasses, and tousled hair you'd be hard-pressed to convince most otherwise. No, even through all of that, you can see a deeper strength, a solid composure that keeps him unruffled, a smoothness to the hunch of his shoulders and curve of his neck as he pores over his notes that draws your eye.

Part of you is wary, warns you that you promised yourself you'd rein in your urges to have and hold and protect those close to you from worldly harms—because it's impossible for one thing and unwelcome for another. But still you cross your arms and cock your head when he ignores your comment and begins to pack up his things into a worn-out school bag bearing his high-school emblem. "You didn't _want_ to loan them your notes, right?" You add a derisive snort at the end, as if the very idea is preposterous. "They're slackers. Just like most everyone else in the class." You glance back at the door; it's just the two of you now, and any minute the hall will start to fill up again with the next wave of students.

He stands and slides his bag over one shoulder, facing you and very obviously waiting for you to move your big ass out of his way. You knew he was quiet; you didn't know he was a passive-aggressive uncommunicative asshole. He does realize you've done him a favor, right? "Excuse me," he eventually mutters, and you can see, with him standing nearly chest to chest with you, that his eyes are dark and dull, like shark's eyes, and he's got bags under them from not sleeping. Doesn't he take care of himself at all? First year of university can be tough—but this is ridiculous.

You frown and duck your head a bit to stare at him head on, gaze narrowing when he refuses to meet you and instead focuses on some distant point behind you, all but staring through you. "You don't look so good. Takano, right?"

He winces almost imperceptibly, and you can see his nostrils flare in annoyance. He takes a step to the side to try and squeeze past you, his slim form finding little difficulty in passing between you and the row of tables behind. You let him go, but stalk up the stairs after him. "What's your given name?" This makes him scale the steps two at a time now, and you can't help the smile that tugs at the corners of your lips. You'd gotten the most insignificant of reactions from him, and it was then that you knew you had to have more.

You got it, eventually. He hadn't wanted to give in, had fought you the whole way—verbally, if not physically. In the end, you wound up having to threaten to leave him—a lie, a vicious, dirty lie—if he didn't come clean with you about everything, about Saga and Oda and Sorata and afternoons spent locked away in the library, and you felt horrible for dredging up those old memories just to satisfy your own self-consciousness. But really, how were you going to be Masamune's everything if you didn't _know_ everything? It was a necessary evil: that's how you justified it to yourself.

He told you he couldn't be with you. That he valued you as a friend, and he couldn't sleep with a friend, couldn't kiss a friend, couldn't hold a friend the way you wanted to hold him. You had snorted derisively, just like you had with the co-eds, and asked, _"If you can't sleep with your friends, who_ can _you sleep with?"_ He didn't have an answer—but it was _your_ number he kept in his cell phone when he erased everyone else from his life. It was _you_ he bummed cigarettes off of when he forgot to pick up a new pack because he'd been up half the night writing a report. It was _you_ he said yes to, without a glimmer of hesitation, when you told him there was a position opening up at Marukawa that you knew he'd be perfect for.

So who could blame you, really? How were you supposed to get the hint that it was all just _what friends do_? No friend before had ever treated you with the same comfortable alternation of biting wit and gentle humor, none had ever spilled themselves to you so openly, or let you get so close—physically, emotionally—as Masamune. How were you supposed to _accept_ that he wasn't just pushing you away for your own good and being contrary but because he really and truly didn't love you?

How were you supposed to just lie back and be _happy_ that the worst thing to ever happen to Masamune had just walked in the front door, cheerfully oblivious and frustratingly caught up in himself? How could Masamune ever expect you to _not_ react the way you had, with that fervent urge to protect welling up inside you, sending your arms reaching out, desperate to hold him close and whisper in his ear all the painful things he once told you in the darkness of your bedroom, soaked into your sheets and burned into your skin where he touched you—how could _he_ be that blind?

You want to hit him—hit him, and hold him, and kiss him until he goes back to forgetting Oda—fuck, _Ritsu_ —again and you're the only thing that matters to him in the world.

You don't, though. You hold yourself back, checking your emotions once again.

Because inside, you know—have always known, really—that he never forgot, not for one minute. You were just…filler. A space-holder, someone for Masamune to lean against, to cling to when he needed, a warm body with an ear that could be bent to listen to his worries and woes until…well, obviously until now. You had deluded yourself these past ten years, hoping and praying that sheer stubborn will would win out in the end, that Masamune would look at you one day and realize, like a flash of insight, that you were the one who'd stayed by his side all this time, helped him through everything and never pressed him, never asked for more than he dared to give. That you were the one who had patiently waited all this time, and that any and all painful events in his past had all been part of a winding, whirring plan to eventually bring the two of you together.

But that's not what happened, and you want to shout to anyone who'll listen—that it isn't fair. It _isn't fair_. It isn't fair that you've been the one to hold him when it's hurt all these years, and that Onodera can just swan in and snatch him away from you (an exaggeration—as Masamune went _ever so willingly_ ). It isn't fair that he gets a do-over while you have to watch the only man you've ever truly loved sit up and beg for more. It isn't fair for a million different reasons that _he_ gets to be happy with Masamune, and you've only ever gotten anything but borrowed time with him.

But you've never been the type to complain about life not being fair—and you aren't about to start now. So you dry your eyes, wash your face, and ask Onodera the only question that matters. And then you go back to work.


End file.
